Why the fuss? North American Telco's have always been a*seholes

Until the Carterphone decision, ATT used to literally scare people not top touch 'their wires'. I installed special high-speed modems way back in the late '60s in the States and when I simply wired them directly to AT&T terminals WITHOUT AN INTERFACE the customer was surprised the world didn't collapse.

If you can find a copy of FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS NOT, written by a Telco man, it describes many of the evil things Bell and AT&T did.

Old habits die hard.

In Canada things are worse. We have Bell Canada, and all it's siblings, and Rogers, but outstripping the US for all the surcharges they make on their captive customers. These two companies practically sleep together.

It's refreshing to see a rebel upsetting the quiescent market state - only risk is he might get taken over, then it's game over.

The court that made this decision is the equivalent of a State supreme court in the States. Furthermore this is a single judge decision and still has more steps to take before it enters the realm of the Supreme Court of Canada.

Just because a BC judge is making like the USA as a super-power, the games are not over yet.

It also raises questions of surveillance

The rich trove of data this outfit will collect is huge. Then comes along the taxman for checking taxi drivers income.

Divorce lawyers will no doubt exploit the information, along with Plod. Imagine what GCHQ and the MI gangs will be able to do.

What about visitors, or poor people who don't rate for credit cards?

Cable is a dreamer, and not long for the unemployment lines. The Chinese don't want to buy anything, they are just waiting for others to prove the concept then they will move in and perfect the technology - as they have done with the Maglev, etc.

Stuff them, I am in control!

My wife, a holder of a technological university degree, recently decided to upgrade some of our domestic machinery decided that some of her choices should be 'connected' or at least capable of making operating decisions.

As a North American we like our washing to be thumped and banged so that every shred of dirt is dispatched down the drain. None of this wimpy, treat things gently Japanese stuff. Another item she bought was a bread/cake maker-baker. I must admit it is nice coming home of a night and smelling fresh cooked bread.

Then there's the new, multi-grain optimised rice cooker. At least it isn't so automatic it can identify the rice types! After years of experimentation I have perfected cooking rice in a microwave. Suits me to a 'T'.

And the most frustrating thing about these new whiz-bang gadgets? They are actually better at the job than the human.

This will continue so long as the ...

British public don't give a damn. The action by the nerdish-looking wimp of a cabinet secretary in destroying The Guardian's computer equipment (albeit it fit for the junk yard) is the sort of action we associate with China and Russia - except they would have no doubt shot them, too - NOT in the UK.

Where is the accountability when a piece of a*sewipe like this man can threaten reasonable newspaper coverage? There are few fora where Heywood can be questioned and held accountable for his illegal actions.

With an election coming soon, the opportunity to remove Cameron, and Heywood, looms. Neither of these people either deserve the office they hold, neither are they fit for the job.

Let's hope that some of the Arabic emirates tell the UK and the USA to take their toys and leave.

As for cable failures, Malaysia/Singapore/VietNam links to the USA went down just before Christmas last and ever since we have been suffering from intermittent outages. Could be a fishing boat at the depth the break occurred, and likewise it wouldn't be an anchor.

Reminds me of when I (and others) cooked expenses ...

whilst working at Mohawk Data Sciences.

We service technicians had many accounts dotted all over the Metro Toronto area which gave rise to a matrix of inter-account road journeys for which we were compensated. Recording the service calls was easy, compiling expenses at the end of the week wasn't.

So we developed this chart, based upon true numbers rounded up to the nearest mile. There were always a few who rounded up a few extra miles - potentially OK for journeys from one end of the city to another.

The accountant was sharp - he could, as your example demonstrates, spot the fakes, the padded accounts! He called me in only once. My territory included God's country (Northern Ontario where bears and aurora borealis hang out). He queried my expenses. I explained that there had been a road closure and my usual motel had caught fire.

Before I left MDS, I asked him how he spotted fakes, and his explanation was similar to the example.

One politician to another: Decades and Centuries? Doesn't concern me!

The report should have omitted the line: "This sector will be a major contributor to sea level rise in the decades and centuries to come," Rignot said. "A conservative estimate is that it could take several centuries for all of the ice to flow into the sea."

Politicians, with their 4, 5 or 6 years political horizons, will seize on this as not worthy of consideration as is outside their foreseeable budget concerns.

Re: Good for the owner

@Flip:

IMEI blocking is useless as they can be replaced with a different number in a 5-minute operation.

I have my cell handset IMEI changed every week or two - last time I took it in to a Samsung Service Centre (we have five in SaiGon) the tech noticed the difference and simply used his laptop to correct it.

If you do change your IMEI and intend to go roaming, visit your Cellco office and ask them if the have the correct IMEI on their computer system.

P.S. It's illegal to change IMEI numbers in Blighty - it makes GCHQ work so much more harder.

Canada quashed this balloney ...

by legislating the whole question including rates.

Now our cities are being dug up as competing fibre optic vendors lay cable. Of course, this excludes Rogers Cable, they prefer the visual pollution system where all there big, black, cables are strung from utility poles.

I'm glad Australia hadn't spread it's gospel before now.

Way back in the day when the US was licking it's wounded pride over it's defeat by VietNam, it banned the export of many goods to this country. European and Chinese companies seized the opportunity to ignore the US and one area, exploited by Germany, was telecommunications.

We have had digital switches since the earliest days, and end-to-end digital signalling, as in handset to handset. You could even hook a digital modem to a line and get fast InterNet. Some telephone instruments even had data connectors.

And they went crazy with fibre optic. Almost every highway has a fibre optic cable under it. These cables surface in towns, villages and hamlets (a few houses) where the distribution boxes are mounted on poles and the house-drops radiate from there.

When I built my house, as well as when I built my office, along comes the cable gang pulling in fibre optics! This means that, depending on the building termination unit configuration, I can select who will provide my cable TV, telephone or InterNet service. As the terminals are easily configured I have managed to change some selections ... unofficially.

Same with my wife's hotels, even though one is somewhat remote, along comes the fibre guys, no copper in sight.

In the cities, copper is eschewed with new buildings also being blessed with multi-vendor fibre optic.

Despite what Australia thinks, IMO copper is passée, and fibre offers the best return on investment, particularly given today's copper prices. The same applies in Canada, except that competing carriers insist on running separate FO drops to each residence!

OttIX (Ottowa)

There is a better way - except only a few governments use it

Each time an international flight is readied, there is a manifest that contains much of the detail collected by Immigration types around the world. These lists could be used to pre-screen passengers - just as the US does for Freedom Fighters/Criminals/Crazies.

UK Immigration already has some border agents in Bangkok (fat, ugly, loud-mouthed and pushy) who pre-screen UK bound flights. They could easily generate lists of people they have suspicions of thereby narrowing the number of interviewees upon arrival. And reducing the workload.

Better still, use PAR or AMS then take the channel train - just as quick as Heathrow.

Every time I see a spectrum chart ...

then watch/glance at a TV program I think what a waste of resources. Scan satellite TV channels and my thoughts are redoubled - numerous channels have duplicated content.

In larger population areas terrestrial TV can easily be carried over fibre optics and in the less populated country areas Low Power Transmitters could be used to distribute the TV signals, fed through fibre optic trunks. These would re-use the same, small, band across the country.

LPTs are common in many larger countries, if their programming choices are limited, so be it - it's one of the joys of living in such places.

How many people really need hundreds of channels from which to choose? So many resources could be better utilised.

My employer manufactures robotic devices for military/government uses and these days we have to supply Software Defined Radio systems with frequency agility. The control unit is turned on and for about 5-10 minutes it surveys the spectrum, then chooses the frequencies it will use, transmits that to slave units and away it goes. No need for spectrum charts.

The military wastes so much spectrum, just scan their designated areas and see just how under utilised it is in non-combat zones. Combat Zones are a different beast, and the military doesn't even consider spectrum allocations. Anyone who has done RF technical work know that the military doesn't give a damn about civilian allocations.

Once again, the US claims the world as it's domain

The US, like a fading star, makes a lot of noise and generally disrupts life.

Who gave it permission to inflict it's self-serving laws on other countries?

At one time the US was the source of many technical components but, as in so many things, it has delegated it's manufacturing to other countries - so it can make more money. Not all countries agree with the supposition that the US and a few buddies can be the ONLY owners of nuclear weapons.

Iran is exercising it's sovereign right. Pakistan is one of the four nuclear armed states (together with India, Israel, and North Korea) who are not, shock and horror, parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

It's comforting to know that IMEI is used ...

by GCHQ and NSA to verify handsets. That's no doubt the reason why the law in the UK is stiff on changing it whilst elsewhere it's not even a consideration.

It seems that they don't verify whether or not an IMEI is correct for the type of handset it is purportedly on, though. IMEI number assignments are issued in blocks to manufacturers.

Changing the IMEI is a breeze, the only hassle is to make sure if you are roaming, make sure that the home Cellco knows the latest IMEI which simply requires a visit to a service centre - occasionally it can be done through a call.

Australians trying to out do the Americans

Australia, like several countries, are hung up on American technology. This time the Australians want to outdo the Yanks.

Not satisfied with hosting two NSA controlled spy stations, it has even built it's very own Australian-only spy base. One of it's other bases has NSA-staff only areas and that, along with another, have remote controlled NSA satellite spy facilities.

The US likes Australia, because the Chinese and Russians can't copy downloads from US spy satellites sent back to the NSA.

Seems like New Zealand are the most sane - they banned nuclear anything from their territory.

Can you ...

Who Is Ripping Whom, RIAA?

"Pandora's conduct also is unfair to the recording artists and musicians whose performances are embodied in Pre-72 Recordings, but who do not get paid for Pandora's exploitation of Pre-72 Recordings."

The real thieves in this is the RIAA who claim to represent artists who, in those early days of R & R, were ripped off left, right and centre by the recording companies. They even made artists compensate them when records (round flack, black things with holes in the middle), etc., were screwed up in production by misplaced labels, deformed moulded tracks [mould too hot] which were the result of sloppy production workers.

So tell me, RIAA, who is going to get the money for Rock Around The Clock - certainly NOT Bill Haley.